Afghans in Iran are citizens of Afghanistan who are temporarily residing in Iran as refugees or asylum seekers. They form the largest percent of the Afghan diaspora. The first wave of Afghans were admitted to Iran after the start of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. According to Afghanistan's Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are approximately 3 million Afghan citizens in Iran as of January 2023, most of whom were born and raised in Iran during the last four decades. They are under the care and protection of the UNHCR, and are provided time-limited legal status by Iran's Bureau of Aliens and Foreign Immigrant Affairs, without a path to obtain permanent residency. There are also about 600,000 Afghan tourists, travelers, merchants, exchanged students, migrant workers, and others. According to Hassan Kazemi Qomi, half of Iran's foreign investors are Afghans. There have been widespread reports of Iranian mistreatment of Afghan migrants and their human rights, and the community is very marginalized. In 2006, about 146,387 undocumented Afghans were deported. Many more continue to experience such events. In 2010, six Afghan prisoners were executed by hanging in the streets of Iran, which sparked angry demonstrations in Afghanistan. Political history and migration As neighboring countries with cultural ties, there has been a long history of population movements between Iran and Afghanistan. Southern Afghanistan was contested between the Persian Safavid dynasty and the Moghuls of India until 1709 when Mir Wais Hotak, founder of the Hotaki dynasty, declared it independent. During the reign of Nader Shah, the brother of Ahmad Shah Durrani was made Governor of Mazandaran Province. A few years after Nader Shah's death, Durrani and his Afghan army made Nader's grandson Shahrokh Afshar, ruler of the small remaining Afshar territory comprising the Khorasan and Kohistan provinces of Iran, their vassal for some years. The region remained a vassal territory of the Afghan Empire until Durrani's death. During the early 19th century, the Persian army invaded Herat several times but with British assistance the Afghans quickly expelled them. Communities made up of 2,000 and 5,000 households of ethnic Hazaras were formed in Torbat-e Jam and Bakharz in Iran. The 1857 Treaty of Paris ended hostilities of the Anglo-Persian War. The modern day Afghan–Iranian border gradually began to take shape in the second half of the 19th century. Afghan migrant workers, pilgrims and merchants, who